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divyareadssister's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
1.75
jaredkwheeler's review
1.0
Star Wars Legends Project #159
Background: Pursuit was written by [a:Elizabeth Hand|40983|Elizabeth Hand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219875344p2/40983.jpg] and published in December 2004. The final 4 of the 6 Boba Fett books are her only Star Wars books, though she has written various non-Star Wars things.
Pursuit picks up immediately where A New Threat (my review left off, 31 months after the Battle of Geonosis, 19 years before the Battle of Yavin. Most of the same characters return, along with Mace Windu and Chancellor Palpatine. The book takes place on Xagobah and Coruscant.
Summary: Left for dead by General Grievous in Wat Tambor's stronghold, Boba Fett will have to act fast if he wants to salvage his errand for Jabba the Hutt. Unfortunately, the best and brightest of both the Republic and the Separatists stand in his way, and this mission is about to get personal.
Review: I feel like, if you're going to stretch a plot across 2 books, the first of which ends on a cliffhanger, it's pretty bad manners to abandon that plot, still unresolved, just a few chapters into the second. I really hope there weren't too many kids anxiously waiting the 8 months between the publication of books 5 and 6 to see how the series resolved, particularly since there's no way this took longer than a couple of day to write.
This continues to give every sign the last book did of having been hastily and sloppily composed, and the action is full of stuff like this: "The missile swerved and followed. Before it could strike its target, Boba loosed a volley from his blaster cannons. [...] He heard the satisfying thunk of impact. Nanoseconds later, the missile imploded." That's . . . not how nanoseconds work. So, Boba hears a "thunk" and a couple billionths of a second later there's an explosion, and he can distinguish between these two events? Come on. Be better.
Then again, maybe it was intentional. At one point, Boba is able to escape being recognized as a clone of Jango, despite having the most recognizable face in the entire Republic, because he no longer resembles the clones . . . because he's so “battle-hardened.” See, the clones have just been fighting the freaking Clone Wars for the past 3 years, whereas Boba has been running low-level jobs on Tatooine for Jabba which is way more strenuous. So that makes total sense.
Again, the references to lore are just a grab-bag thrown in whenever and however, so we get stuff like this observation by Boba on Coruscant: "The airspeeder shot past another speeder full of willowy young Dathomir witches." That's not . . . He wouldn't be able to . . . You know what? Nevermind. It's not even worth the time. It's so grating that both this book and the last book sound fine if you just hear a plot summary. There's plenty of potential for drama and excitement. But the execution is unremittingly poor. Weak ending for a series that was not without promise.
F
Background: Pursuit was written by [a:Elizabeth Hand|40983|Elizabeth Hand|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1219875344p2/40983.jpg] and published in December 2004. The final 4 of the 6 Boba Fett books are her only Star Wars books, though she has written various non-Star Wars things.
Pursuit picks up immediately where A New Threat (my review left off, 31 months after the Battle of Geonosis, 19 years before the Battle of Yavin. Most of the same characters return, along with Mace Windu and Chancellor Palpatine. The book takes place on Xagobah and Coruscant.
Summary: Left for dead by General Grievous in Wat Tambor's stronghold, Boba Fett will have to act fast if he wants to salvage his errand for Jabba the Hutt. Unfortunately, the best and brightest of both the Republic and the Separatists stand in his way, and this mission is about to get personal.
Review: I feel like, if you're going to stretch a plot across 2 books, the first of which ends on a cliffhanger, it's pretty bad manners to abandon that plot, still unresolved, just a few chapters into the second. I really hope there weren't too many kids anxiously waiting the 8 months between the publication of books 5 and 6 to see how the series resolved, particularly since there's no way this took longer than a couple of day to write.
This continues to give every sign the last book did of having been hastily and sloppily composed, and the action is full of stuff like this: "The missile swerved and followed. Before it could strike its target, Boba loosed a volley from his blaster cannons. [...] He heard the satisfying thunk of impact. Nanoseconds later, the missile imploded." That's . . . not how nanoseconds work. So, Boba hears a "thunk" and a couple billionths of a second later there's an explosion, and he can distinguish between these two events? Come on. Be better.
Then again, maybe it was intentional. At one point, Boba is able to escape being recognized as a clone of Jango, despite having the most recognizable face in the entire Republic, because he no longer resembles the clones . . . because he's so “battle-hardened.” See, the clones have just been fighting the freaking Clone Wars for the past 3 years, whereas Boba has been running low-level jobs on Tatooine for Jabba which is way more strenuous. So that makes total sense.
Again, the references to lore are just a grab-bag thrown in whenever and however, so we get stuff like this observation by Boba on Coruscant: "The airspeeder shot past another speeder full of willowy young Dathomir witches." That's not . . . He wouldn't be able to . . . You know what? Nevermind. It's not even worth the time. It's so grating that both this book and the last book sound fine if you just hear a plot summary. There's plenty of potential for drama and excitement. But the execution is unremittingly poor. Weak ending for a series that was not without promise.
F
hstapp's review
3.0
A decent story, but not the most exciting end for a series. Especially after the last book. Still it did retain my interest though I feel a bit cheated at Wat Tambor's escape. Even though I knew that they had to get away.
joshgauthier's review
4.0
A little abrupt in its conclusion to the overall series, Pursuit nevertheless sees young Boba Fett facing off with his most powerful enemies yet as he fully assumes the role of on of the galaxy's most notorious bounty hunters. Hand works in plenty of connections to the larger universe and maintains tone necessary for a middle grade novel--while also charting Fett's growth from uncertain boy to a feared hunter willing to challenge the fiercest powers in the Republic.
amiry's review
2.0
I still think Boba should have offed Mace Windu, not Anakin. He came close in this book and that was cheap.
verkisto's review
1.0
What a wreck of a novel. It picks up from the events in A New Threat and keeps going, but there doesn't seem to be any coherence as to where the story is going. We get a little bit of Boba, a bit of Anakin, a touch of Dooku and Palpatine, and some Coruscant, tied in with the two main threads that have been woven into the series -- Boba's vendetta against Mace Windu and his knowledge of Tyranus and Dooku being the same person -- are just written off without complication. Plus, the main plot of the last two books, that of capturing Wat Tambor, is also dismissed. It's anticlimactic, and problematic in other ways.
Boba talks to himself a lot, which seems like a horrible trait for a bounty hunter to have. I get why it's there, narratively (so the reader can know what he's thinking), but why not have him think those things instead of speaking them aloud? I mean, sure, I mutter to myself when I'm debugging my code, but to me there's a huge difference between that and carrying on a monologue with oneself while, say, piloting a ship during a space battle.
I mentioned in the previous books how Boba making friends seemed at odds to his character, but if Hand brings them in, she should stick with it. Pursuit concludes the entire series, and we only get a mention of Gab'borah and Ygabba, with Boba riding off into deep space without a thought of returning to Jabba's palace to speak to them. This was after the two of them repaired Jango's body armor to give to Boba as a gift! I guess this makes him the selfish, calculating bounty hunter that he's supposed to become later?
For five books, Boba has talked about killing Mace Windu, and the showdown finally happens here. Disregarding the fact that Boba couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, take down Mace Windu, and that Mace wouldn't tolerate some young upstart trying to kill him in Palpatine's chambers, the whole thing comes to a close thanks to Palpatine's intervention. Nobody dies (which we already know), but Boba leaves the chambers seemingly fine with not taking his revenge. So the one big motivating factor of the entire series is dismissed without thought.
For that matter, when Boba finally tells Palpatine that Tyranus and Dooku are the same person, Palpatine just says "I know", and then reveals that he's working against the Republic. Boba's cool with it, Palpatine's cool with it (after saying "I trust you to keep this to yourself"), and the universe goes on. What the crap is that about? Why didn't Palpatine straight up execute Boba once he knew he knew his secret? Did I miss something there?
Finally: Elan Sleazebaggano? For real?
The entire Boba Fett series was mediocre, at best, but Pursuit brings it to a terrible close. If you've come this far with the series, you may as well finish it out, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I'm hoping some books in the adult Expanded Universe will do a better job of filling in Boba's back story.
Boba talks to himself a lot, which seems like a horrible trait for a bounty hunter to have. I get why it's there, narratively (so the reader can know what he's thinking), but why not have him think those things instead of speaking them aloud? I mean, sure, I mutter to myself when I'm debugging my code, but to me there's a huge difference between that and carrying on a monologue with oneself while, say, piloting a ship during a space battle.
I mentioned in the previous books how Boba making friends seemed at odds to his character, but if Hand brings them in, she should stick with it. Pursuit concludes the entire series, and we only get a mention of Gab'borah and Ygabba, with Boba riding off into deep space without a thought of returning to Jabba's palace to speak to them. This was after the two of them repaired Jango's body armor to give to Boba as a gift! I guess this makes him the selfish, calculating bounty hunter that he's supposed to become later?
For five books, Boba has talked about killing Mace Windu, and the showdown finally happens here. Disregarding the fact that Boba couldn't possibly, under any circumstances, take down Mace Windu, and that Mace wouldn't tolerate some young upstart trying to kill him in Palpatine's chambers, the whole thing comes to a close thanks to Palpatine's intervention. Nobody dies (which we already know), but Boba leaves the chambers seemingly fine with not taking his revenge. So the one big motivating factor of the entire series is dismissed without thought.
For that matter, when Boba finally tells Palpatine that Tyranus and Dooku are the same person, Palpatine just says "I know", and then reveals that he's working against the Republic. Boba's cool with it, Palpatine's cool with it (after saying "I trust you to keep this to yourself"), and the universe goes on. What the crap is that about? Why didn't Palpatine straight up execute Boba once he knew he knew his secret? Did I miss something there?
Finally: Elan Sleazebaggano? For real?
The entire Boba Fett series was mediocre, at best, but Pursuit brings it to a terrible close. If you've come this far with the series, you may as well finish it out, but I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. I'm hoping some books in the adult Expanded Universe will do a better job of filling in Boba's back story.
echoes01's review
3.0
2.5 stars. This should not have been its own standalone story. A lot of the beginning is dependent on what happened in the previous book. There’s also some really convenient plot elements that I don’t think would realistically happen in a better written story. That being said, the ending did have some really fun scenes.
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